7 Best Home Network Monitoring Tools in 2023 [Free & Paid]

Every internet user must pay attention to the importance of efficient network traffic monitoring. Today, there are billions of internet users worldwide, and internet access is expected to increase. As a result, network traffic will also increase. Some assume only large enterprises require network monitoring tools, but that’s not the true home network that is also prone to malicious activities and failures.

You can ensure all the systems are running optimally by monitoring home network traffic. Moreover, you can also take some preventive measures against network issues before they damage the system. In this article, we’ll discuss the best home network monitoring tools that help users troubleshoot their home networks and gain insights into network performance. 

Best home network monitor software

1. Paessler PRTG – Best home network monitoring software overall

Supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Hosting: On-premise and cloud-based.

License: Freeware, commercial license.

Developer: Parssler AG.

PRTG is trusted by 500,000 users and recognized as a leading product by an industry analyst. With PRTG, home network users and network administrators can monitor the health and performance of network devices, traffic, applications, servers, and many more. As a result, they can ensure the optimal functioning of their IT infrastructure and business processes.

Suppose the issue arises in the home network. In that case, it immediately sends a notification to the concerned persons so they can take proactive measures to offset the potential threat of network damage. 

Pros

• Easy installation and fast setup.
• It can be configured for remote monitoring of multiple locations.
• Equipped with pre-configured PRTG sensors and device templates.
• Offers customizable maps and dashboards.
• Comes with basic IT automation tasks.
• Monitor websites, applications, services, and many more.
• Supports all important technologies, including SNMP, WMI, SSH, and HTTP requests.

Cons

• It comes with a wide range of features that require considerable time to understand.
• Server-based licensing is relatively expensive.

Download Paessler PRTG

2. Network Bandwidth Analyzer – Multi-vendor home network monitoring tool

Supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, AWS, and Azure.

License: free, commercial license.

Developer: SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC.

Targeted customers: network engineers and home network users.

Network bandwidth analyzer is a comprehensive fault monitoring and home network management software. It can significantly reduce network outages and detect, diagnose, and resolve multi-vendor network performance with its easy-to-use features.

Additionally, it enables troubleshooters to identify the root cause of network issues quickly with an intelligent and topology-centric network alerts. 

Similarly, it accelerates the detection of the root cause of network performance issues. All you need to do is to drag and drop the performance metrics on a network performance metrics. Eventually, the software will create a visual correlation across all your network data. 

 Pros

• Enable users to identify the root cause of network congestion and slowdown.
• Ability to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues with in-depth insights into traffic patterns.
• It can flawlessly pinpoint what is causing packet loss and bandwidth issues by leveraging the network flow data.
• Track response time and availability of routers, switches, and SNMP-enabled devices.
• Pinpoint applications consume the highest bandwidth.
• Easy to use, install, and configure.
• Send immediate alerts if network traffic suddenly increases, decreases, or disappears.
• Convert traffic data into a web-based interface for efficient home network traffic monitoring.

Cons

• Does not integrate with third-party apps.

Download Network Bandwidth Analyzer

3. ManageEngine OpManager – Scalable and affordable home network traffic monitor

Supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

License: free, commercial license.

Developer: Zoho Corp.

ManageEngine OpManager offers an affordable solution for resolving simple to complex network performance challenges. Trusted by millions of internet users and network traffic analyzers worldwide and has been working in the network monitoring domain for more than 20 years.

Furthermore, ManageEngine is an affordable, scalable, and user-friendly network traffic monitoring solution. It features many network monitoring tools to assist internet users and administrators in monitoring an entire network in a few minutes. 

On top of that, this is among the few home network monitoring tools that adopt a systematic approach to network monitoring. As a result, the process will become simpler and effortless.

ManageEngine can efficiently monitor multi-vendor devices like Cisco, Oracle, and IBM to monitor the performance metrics like CPU, disk utilization, latency, VoIP, etc. It performs all these activities from a single console. Moreover, it lets the users define their monitoring metrics apart from the predefined ones by harnessing the monitoring ability of OpManager.

Pros

• Ready-to-install and easy-to-use mobile and android apps.
• Proactively monitor the performance of all the network devices, including routers, switches, firewalls, VMs, servers, load balancers, and wireless LAN controllers.
• Monitor performance metrics like packet loss, CPU, and memory.
• Leveraging the capacity of AI and ML algorithms, it sends instant notifications via different communication mediums like SMS, email, and log tickers.
• Allow internet users to take preventive measures before the network issue hurts the system.
• Automate the repetitive manual task using workflow.
• Visualize network performance using different visualization techniques.
• Create and publish performance reports that allow network administrators to draw meaningful insights.

Cons

• Users are required to spend time learning this feature-rich product.
• Developer hasn’t focused enough on product security.

Download ManageEngine OpManager

4. Obkio – Legacy-free home network traffic monitor

Supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

License: free, commercial license.

Developer: Obkio Inc. 

Obkio simplifies network traffic monitoring easier than ever before. It continuously monitors network performance and proactively detects intermittent users that are otherwise hard to identify. Besides, it offers a real end-to-end solution to identify network issues from anywhere worldwide. It deploys multiple monitoring agents across different ends of your home network to accomplish this task.

Additionally, it lets the users receive automatic alerts that affect the user experience, like latency or network digestion. On top of that, it accelerates network troubleshooting by instantly identifying why the problem arises, the creator of a problem (user application, network, or ISP), and who is responsible for fixing it.

Pros

• It uses distributed monitoring strategy to monitor user experience.
• Monitor local networks (LAN, VPN) and third-party networks like WAN, ISP, and Internet peering.
• Since Obkio is a SaaS-based application, it is easy to access and deploy.
• Users can use network monitoring templates to define monitoring sessions across different network ends.
• It harnesses synthetic traffic to monitor key network metrics.
• SNMP-enabled devices monitoring like firewalls, routers, switches, and Wi-Fi access points.
• Immediately detects network problems created by excessive CPU usage.
• Live traceroutes proactively identifies and troubleshoot current network problems.

Cons

• In some countries, the number of public agents that can be used for testing is limited.
• No built-in APIs that allow users to pull data to other systems.

Download Obkio

5. WhatsUp Gold – Award-winning free home network monitoring software for Windows and LAMP

Supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, AWS, and Azure.

License: Freeware, commercial license.

Developer: Progress Software Corporation.

WhatsUp Gold offers visibility into network devices’ and servers’ status and performance. It displays an interactive map of an entire network infrastructure. Moreover, it allows users to monitor all the critical aspects of the SNMP-enabled network devices, wireless controllers, and virtual machines. 

With the WhatsUp Gold real-time alerts, you can ensure optimal performance to meet or emulate SLAs (service level agreements). On top of that, using these exceptional tools, you can monitor physical servers, VMs, and applications with its easy-to-use and customizable maps and dashboards.  All you need to do is click on any device in WhatsUp Gold to access a host of network monitoring settings.

Pros

• Easily switch between physical, virtual, wireless, and dependency views.
• Reduce MTTR.
• Monitor the performance of Linux systems, Apache web servers, and Microsoft applications.
• Analyze bandwidth consumed by networks, servers, and applications.
• Ensure optimal performance of wireless networks.
• Delivers detailed data on network traffic and bandwidth consumption.
• It simplifies your life as a network engineer, specifically when logs become essential to your network issue diagnosis process.

Cons

• It uses 32-bit processing that consumes more time to discover devices in the virtual environment.
• It uses a multi-step deployment system that makes it difficult to navigate.

Download WhatsUp Gold

6. Domotz – Simple and straightforward network monitor with transparent pricing

Support platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

License: Freeware, commercial.

Developer: Domotz, INC.

Domotz offers both IT infrastructure and home network monitoring tools to its users. It provides a powerful, effective, affordable, and easy-to-use monitoring solution. Moreover, it equips users with useful features to monitor the home network. 

The developer of this monitoring solution aims to empower users with actionable insights from their digital networks. Domotz combines real-time knowledge with an easy-to-use functionality to provide users with the highest digital security while surfing the web.

Pros

• No limits in terms of the number or types of devices.
• Issue alerts regarding changes in the network or deterioration in the network performance.
• Monitor all the IP-connected devices regardless of the brand name or manufacturer.
• Monitor TCP services on connected devices like HTTP, SSH, and TELNET.
• Perform simple and hassle-free monitoring of Wi-Fi access points, including all Wi-Fi-connected devices.
• Create ISP Speed tests and bottlenecks to help determine packet loss.
• Automatically scan open ports with just one click.
• Retrieve valuable information about virtual machines, such as power state, memory size, etc.

Cons

• The desktop app is laggy when you manage too many devices.
• No paid training or certifications on the advanced features.

Download Domotz

7. Network Performance Monitor – Comprehensive network performance management software 

License: Freeware, commercial license

Supported devices: home network, SNMP, and WMI-enabled devices.

Developer: SolarWinds Worldwide LLC.

If you are experiencing a degradation in the VPN services, consider embracing the Network Performance Monitoring tool. It provides complete visibility into the health and performance of an entire Cisco ASA environment, so you can view the status of VPN devices to ensure connectivity between the sites.

On top of that, Network Performance Monitor helps save time and effort by managing configuration and compliance for routers, switches, and other networks.

It also shows all the devices, appliances, networks, and vendors in a single-path analysis for more signal and less noise to avoid network slowdown. Above all, it allows you to customize alerts based on nested triggered conditions, so your team will only receive meaningful and actionable alerts.

Pros

• Quickly resolve home network performance issues and avoid downtime.
• Manage and monitor your home network firewall in a single platform.
• View graphs, tables, and lists to identify fault, availability, and performance information.
• Use a multi-vendor LAN monitor to monitor networks of any size.
• Monitor router traffic for different vendors with a single interface.
• Quickly troubleshoot and diagnose network faults, availability, and performance-related issues.
• Equipped with a network packet capture tool to identify the root cause of network anomalies.

Cons

• Tracking all the changes in the tool is challenging.

Download Network Performance Monitor

How can I monitor network traffic in my home?

There are numerous ways to monitor home network traffic. However, you should first analyze the complexity and size of the network before jumping to any conclusion. 

If you have a small network with low traffic, the PRTG network monitors best suit you. It is an easy-to-use tool and can monitor all the incoming and outgoing traffic in a home network,

On the other hand, if you want a more sophisticated monitoring solution for your home network, consider embracing Network Performance Monitor. It provides visibility into the home network and diagnoses the root cause of network congestion.

Best free home network monitoring software

To help you select the best free monitoring software, we’ve analyzed much software and crafted criteria for the best monitoring solution.

• Software must use SNMP to monitor network devices.
• Nice to have a network traffic analysis feature.
• Flawlessly run on Windows, Mac, and Linux OS.
• The software offers a graphical representation of network devices.
• The users must have a free trial period to explore all the features before switching to the paid option.

Final thoughts

Home network traffic monitoring is imperative for the security and optimal performance of the home network. By embracing the best monitoring tool like PRTG and NPM, users can get the most value from an internet connection while protecting their devices from intruders.